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MythBusters - The Lost Experiments
theLorax writes "From Discovery: "If you like the MythBusters here are some videos they just posted of some of the out takes and things that didn't appear on the show. Cola bits (cleaning things with cola), water torture, otter ping pong, live power lines, cement build up and plywood flight."
Here is the interview we did with these guys in December.
That is not the arguement though. The arguement is not if Mythbusters is a good show, it is the question of are they playing appropriate shows on the Discovery Channel (as to their reputation)
do.what.promptcmds
I've seen 3 of the 5 episodes that you've described, I'll describe what I can remember from them.
Water Torture - Chineese water torture myth. Basically the idea that if you restrain someone to a chair and constantly drip water at a slow rate (1-2 drops per second or so) it'll cause them to crack. It's an elegant torture in that all it requires is time, it's easy to set up, and you don't need an interrogator to administer it, and it's insidious in that nobody would expect that a little harmless dripping would cause to to break. They did show that the torture was effective against the myth crew in about an hour or 2, though you have to wonder how a hardened navy seal might react differently.
Otter Ping Pong - They were testing the myth that you could raise a sunken ship by pumping thousands of ping pong balls into the hull. During the myth, an otter swam down to the hull and stole a ping pong ball and started playing with it, which caused everyone to worry that it might choke on it if it tried to swallow it. The myth was eventually proved successful.
Cement Build Up - They tested the myth that the inside of a cement mixer could be cleaned of all the dried cement build up that accumulates on the inside of the drum during normal use by exploding a stick of dynamite in the drum, a much more efficient method than the usual method of having to chissel the surface by hand. The clip in the video showed a snafu that occured with the first truck when they accidentally filled it up with cement rather than just having enough for a thin coat. It lead up to a spectacular event where they blew up the enture truck with 850 pounds of TNT.
I thought the Plywood flight myth was concerning a man who claimed to have been blown off the roof of a building under construction (several stories high) while holding onto a sheet of plywood. As the myth goes he managed to use the plywood as a sort of parachute and floated down to the ground unharmed. The Mythbusters apprentices did the actual leg-work in breaking the myth and found that the force against the wood was too much to handle and the board continually fell out of their hands. (they set-up some rig where one of the guys held onto the board, with an anemometer and such to test various forces) They failed to take into account the sheer determination a man falling to his potential death would have in holding onto his life-saving device.
The unexamined life is not worth living
As it happens, she was pretty freaked out by it, which neither she nor anyone else was really expecting. It was very unpleasant to watch, I found. :(
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
With ping pong balls, you don't have to worry about the thousands of microcracks in the hull which would allow regular air to seep through. You only have to secure the hull so that there aren't any cracks bigger than 10 or 15 millimeters, since the pingpong balls make it so that you basically have air "molecules" that are ping pong ball sized and won't escape at any tiny hole.
"haven't experienced it personally "
enough said. Even Experts pass along myths. Show me an IEEE paper on the subject then you may have proof. But my "uncle/brother/mother/father/friend" had a "uncle/mother/father/brother/sister/dog" that... is not proof.
I have seen a microphone wire going into a notebook computer pick up an AM signal which is totally logical but the fillings is still unproven.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.